ACTION 27: Public bodies will evaluate the potential for exploiting digital mapping and GIS technologies in ways that are affordable, sustainable and of relevance to the customer bases of their services, taking into account the personal or commercial sensitivities of the data.

DAFM - GIS and Spatial data

( Action 27 - in progress )

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine utilise digital mapping and GIS technologies as a key component of their Integrated IT systems. In particular this technology is used to underpin the Single Payment and Forestry systems operated by DAFM.

GeoPortal.ie is the Republic of Ireland’s portal for Geographic Information and has been developed by the Department of Environment, Community & Local Government (DECLG) with Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) as a technical partner, in order to comply with the EU INSPIRE Directive and to further the desire within Ireland for a national Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). GeoPortal makes Geographic Information easy to find and use, acting as a gateway to very useful data from a wide range of content providers. By making Geographical Information more accessible and interoperable for a wide range of purposes, Geoportal aims to better support sustainable development by enabling collaboration, integration and more efficient decision making across Ireland.

CSO
integrated digital mapping and GIS technologies in the 2011 Census. The
project began with the purchase of GIS software and mapping fom OSi. GIS
technology was used to:

Reduce the staff input into Census Geography from 53
person years in 2006 to 33 in 2011.

Contribute to the quality control of the
Small Areas compiled by the National Institute of Spatial Analysis and OSi.
Small Areas are now being widely used for spatial planning.

Designate the
state into manageable workloads for enumerators using the new Small
Areas.

Print enumerator maps with each dwelling uniquely referenced.

Calculate preset travel allowances for rural enumerators and travel budget
ceilings for Census Field managers. As a result CSO kept travel and
subsistence for 5,500 field staff at the 2006 level (€2.6m) despite an
increase of 10% in the number of field staff and a 30% increase in the cost
of a commuter ticket for urban enumerators costing €250,000.

Optimise the geographical placement of 5,500 field staff as part of the
recruitment process.

Put geo co-ordinates on every census dwelling resulting in the
automation of geography coding of Censusreturns leading to more detailed and
accurate geography than possible in previous Censuses.

Release detailed Census data for 18,500 Small Areas averaging 90
households previously the most detailed data released was for EDs averaging
485 households.

Make detailed Census data available on the CSO website
via a user friendly mapping interface. http://census.cso.ie/sapmap/

Provide input data at Small Area level for the calculation of the Pobal
HP deprivation index see
https://www.pobal.ie/Pages/New-Measures.aspx for 2006 and 2011. This
index is now the basis for major funding decisions made by Pobal and the
HSE.

Provided data at a number of levels of geography to the All-Island
Research Observatory who have putup a number of Census mapping tools
http://www.airo.ie/mapping-module/census .

Produce Census data for Diocese and Parishes for the first time.

Geocode place of school or college in addition to place of work in
Census 2011 enabling provision of the POWSCAR research micro data file.
The POWSCAR data is a major research resource for transport and school
planning. See
http://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2011placeofworkschoolorcollege-censusofanonymisedrecordspowscar/

Make detailed Census of Agriculture
data available on the CSO web site via a user friendly mapping interface
http://census.cso.ie/agrimap/

Going
forward CSO will be able to reclassify the Census results according to new
levels of geography

e.g. the revised Constituency and Local Electoral Area
boundaries without the need for major clerical recoding.

Advice on Aquaculture Foreshore Licensing is provided by a cross-organisational team in DAFM, the Marine Institute and BIM based in muliple locations and using data from several different sources.

To facilate the decision making process a GIS web application has been deployed which allows the user to search for and view information on specific applications against the relevant reference data.

This allows the entire team across the various sites and organisations to see exactly the same version of data reducing potential for error, and to do so in an easy to use and efficient manner without the need for specialist GIS expertise. This approach has potential to be extended for other types of foreshore licensing decision support.

The SFPA provides a secure website with real time satellite tracking data from all Irish registered fishing vessels over 15m in length. Data in respect of a particular vessel is made availble to authorised users thus allowing them to monitor the location and activity levels of that vessel wherever in the world it may be. Authorised users are typically family members or vessel owners.

A GIS planning tool has been developed for use by Fáilte Ireland staff internally. TourismEye http://tourismeye.failteireland.ie/#/Map displays data graphically on OSI maps to aid planning. Datasets displayed are tourism business listsing data from Fáilte Irelands Tourism Content System (TCS), transport data from the National Transport Authority, Disused Railways Lines, Shipwrecks, Blue Flag beaches, Green Coast from the National Trails Office and data from the National Parks and Wildlife Service

Meath County Council makes extensive use of GIS technologies and have recently upgraded our public facing mapping solution, initially providing map-based access to planning applications, but to be extended to a wide range of spatial data. We have also implemented an internal intranet based mapping solution which provides a wealth of spatial data to support decision making and processes across the organisation.

Galway County Council have a dedicated GIS team providing co-ordination, advice, training and support to all sections of the local Authority in the capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying of geographical data. This includes improvements in data quality and availability as well as finding appropriate software and hardware solutions to all GIS needs of Galway County Council and its customers e.g. mobile solution for road network survey. We have committed to fully comply with the INSPIRE, Water framework and Habitats EU directives in a timely manner e.g. geo-networks metadata. The GIS team also work with other local Authorities as well as government agencies and private companies in an effort to provide cost effective, streamlined processes that make GIS data accessible and user friendly to everyone. e.g. planning datasets – ww.myplan.ie, ww.mypp.ie & www.galway.ie. GIS also has an important role in improving the collection of payments due to the council such as rates, rents and household charges in a sensitive manner, as well as the maintenance of assets held by the Local Authority e.g. land, housing, water networks, piers and graveyards. The GIS team and Galway County Council seek to continually improve the use and availability of GIS in a cost effective and efficient manner to best serve the needs of the organistaion and its customers.

Waterford County Council upgraded the mapping service
available to the public via our website in 2012. The new solution includes not
only map-based Planning application data but also community based spatial data
sets.

Our small GIS team supports all departments of WCC in
capturing, managing, analysing and display of spatial data. We provide training
to staff and to a great number of Interns through JobBridge. Training includes
improvements in data quality and compliance with the INSPIRE legislative
framework. Short video clips are used as a training tool showing the use of GIS
applications.

Discover Carlow is a cloud based mapping solution introduced by Carlow Local
Authorities. The solution allows the organisation to efficiently and
effectively manage its geospatial content including maps, map
applications, thematics and other geographic data.

The adoption of a cloud based solution has also helped the
organisation share its geospatial content with a broader range of
customers. Customers now have access to a range of online maps and
applications that are extremely intuitive and user friendly.